Chapter 25. Easier than Expected?

'That was easier than I expected,' Ferdibrand said to Haldoron as the New Travellers reached the dark woods after making their way down the southern side of the high ridge where they'd camped the previous night. 'I never thought I'd feel the inclination to thank a troll, of all creatures, but following their trail certainly eased the process.'

'Blessed shade,' the Took added, looking up and around at the surrounding trees. The woods were dark after the bright morning sunshine, cool and shadowy and uncommonly quiet. Even Haldoron's soft footsteps, clearly audible to Hobbits' ears when the Man was walking on packed dirt, were hushed by the thick bed of fallen needles underfoot.

'I deem 'twas a good thing we started as early as we did,' the Ranger-guide agreed. 'The day is rapidly warming.'

The party walked on in relative silence until the path they followed emerged from a belt of fir-trees. 'Mind the steep slope!' Ferdi called to the younger hobbits walking ahead. 'We want no tumbles or careless steps to mar this fine day!'

The youngsters' spirits, so recently subdued in the dim silence under the trees, rose abruptly in the bright sunshine. 'Fine day indeed!' young Faramir cried, throwing up his arms to greet the return of the Sun. 'Why, I almost feel I could fly!'

Nonetheless, he heeded his uncle's warning, dropping his eyes to survey the ground ahead before stepping off, and taking Pip-lad's arm with one hand and using his walking stick to steady himself with the other.

Robin Bolger followed close at the teens' heels, ready to grab at one or the other should one of them slip and threaten to take the other down with him. Being taller than either teen, even though Farry was tall for his age, he could keep one eye on the ground ahead of the youths and the other on his own footing. Growing up in the depths of the Woody End had honed his ability to walk with confidence on rough and uncertain ground. Steep as the slope might be, keeping his footing on this path was child's play by comparison.

At the bottom of the slope, the path turned sharply left and led the New Travellers round the corner of a rocky shoulder of the hill and onto a level stretch that ran under the face of a low cliff. The trees that hung over the path from the cliffside offered little shade at this time of day, with the Sun going before them, sitting high in the sky and laughing down at them.

Pip-lad shaded his eyes from the Sun's dazzling light and pointed ahead. 'Look! I can see the door!'

'The Troll-hole that both of my cousins wrote about,' Ferdi confirmed to Haldoron.

'Race you there!' Farry shouted, and the teens took off at a run. Young Faramir, with his longer legs, might have claimed the prize, except that his longer legs likely contributed to a stumble that allowed the shorter Gamgee lad to reach the finish at roughly the same instant. Clumsiness is a byword for hobbit teens and tweens since, after a growth spurt, they are said not to "know where their arms and legs end", and it takes a period of adjustment for them to move with the usual deftness that is common to Hobbits. And then, of course, another growth spurt happens if they have not reached the end of their growing years.

Thus, the Ranger-guide and older Hobbits in the party were obliged to watch over them with all the more diligence, considering the rough country they would be traversing at various points along this extended journey.

At this moment, however, both teens were bent over, holding their knees, and laughing breathlessly while, at the same time, gasping for breath. Robin reached them first, gave them a quick glance, and peered into the shadowy cavern behind the door.

'Bones,' Pip-lad gasped, straightening to address Farry's older cousin. 'Old bones, empty jars...' he drew a few more quick breaths, '...and broken pots.'

Robin shook his head. 'Empty,' he said, with a quizzical look for the teen. He stepped aside, gesturing to the teens to look closer. The Sun helpfully cast her rays through the doorway and a little way into the darkness beyond.

'That's what it says in the Red Book!' Pip-lad insisted.

'Looks like someone or something cleared it out since then,' Robin said to the stragglers. Haldoron nodded, and Ferdi looked at him in sudden suspicion.

'Rangers buried the bones,' the Man said, meeting Ferdi's keen look with a nod, 'cleared out the rest, and swept the floor clean with pine boughs. By order of the King,' he added on seeing the Hobbits' curious expressions.

'O' course,' Ferdi said under his breath. 'I deem, 'twould ha' been the decent thing to do. I expect not all the bones were those of deer or sheep or ponies...'

'It doesn't look at all like a troll-hole,' Farry mused, then coloured and added, 'at least, not like any troll-hole I've imagined.'

But Pip-lad backed him up. 'I agree,' he said. 'I might not have recognised it as the hole Mister Frodo described in the Red Book, except for the door – still hanging by one great hinge, all this time later! – guarding the opening in the cliff-side, so to speak.'

Ferdi examined the intact hinge and looked up to give the broken hinge, one part still attached to the wall, a cursory examination, along with its still-functioning twin. 'Good construction, to bear the weight of a stone door all these years, and without the help of its companion.' He ran a hand over the jamb of the doorway, reached around to lay his palm against the inner wall of the cavern, and nodded in appreciation. 'Dwarf-made?' he hazarded. The opening to the rock-chamber reminded him slightly of the fabled storage-hole that had once held the treasure-hoard of the Thain, built by Dwarves at some time in the past and destroyed in a violent explosion set off by rogue Men not all that long ago by comparison.

'Trolls are not builders,' Haldoron confirmed. 'Bilbo's trolls probably discovered the cavern and claimed it for their own foul purposes.'

'I hope the builders or original owners were not here when the trolls arrived,' Farry whispered, looking sick. Pip-lad gulped, and Robin looked a little green.

'We'll never know,' Ferdi put in quietly. 'But if their bones were here, scattered amongst the others, at least they received a decent burial at last.'

With nothing to see but an empty cavern, the party turned away from the entrance as of one accord and began to follow the path again, which turned to the right across the level space and then plunged down a thick wooded slope, 'just as Mister Frodo wrote in the Red Book!' – or so Pip-lad proclaimed.

'Where would we be if the lad hadn't half-memorised my cousin's account?' Ferdi mused as they followed the teens down the slope. Though they might have walked abreast, the Ranger-guide and older Hobbit were content to let the younger Travellers take the lead.

'Half-memorised?' Haldoron retorted. 'Are Tooks habitually given to understatement?'

Ferdi let out a half-choked chuckle, followed by '...lots, and none at all...'

Seeing Haldoron glance at him askance, he explained, 'As a small child and again, later, as a teen, I heard old Bilbo tell the story. "Bilbo Baggins, a bur—a hobbit...", as he introduced himself to the trolls who'd caught him picking their pockets – or trying to! And "How many of you burrahobbits might there be, a-sneakin' around these here woods? Enough to make a pie with, d'you think?"

Although the teens were walking ahead of them, Faramir had obviously been heeding the conversation, for he threw over his shoulder, 'According to my da, you sound exactly like Old Uncle Bilbo when you tell your stories about him...' But then the teen stumbled. The young Gamgee caught his arm and saved him from sprawling with the good-natured warning: Watch where you're walking, or walk where you're watching!

Haldoron nodded and confirmed, 'You do sound like the old hobbit, at that.'

Ferdi sketched a bow. 'I must admit, I paid close attention to him when he was telling his stories... They were riveting...'

'And look at you now,' Haldoron said. 'Off on an adventure, like Bilbo before you.'

'You're jesting,' Ferdi said flatly. 'You must be. This is a history lesson – granted, a rather extended one... Hobbits do not go off on adventures, I would have you know.'

'No, they merely stumble into them, I expect,' the Man retorted. 'Bilbo...' he said, ticking off the name on his fingers.

'Was bewitched by a wizard,' Ferdi replied as if that settled the matter.

'That doesn't sound right, somehow,' Farry said behind his hand to Pip-lad.

'Well, "be-wizarded" isn't a word I've ever heard of,' the Gamgee teen responded.

'And then there was Frodo...' persisted the Ranger-guide.

'...who had little choice in the matter,' Ferdi said. 'He did not leave the Shire behind by choice but rather by necessity. I should hardly call him adventure-seeking, not by any measure.'

'...and his young cousins; they also ventured out into the Wilds by necessity and not because Bilbo's stories intrigued them, even inspired them?' Haldoron said, raising an eyebrow.

'O' course!' Ferdi said severely. 'They ventured forth for the love of my cousin Frodo, as did the good Mayor! They would never have left the Shire on their own account.' He raised a staying hand. 'And don't bring up the Hobbits who left the Shire to "go to Sea" or some such; for all of them, as I understand their stories, were running away rather than running to something or other.'

But the Man was more curious than teasing now. 'And you, yourself?' he asked, his steps slowing as he examined his companion's face. 'Did you never feel the thrill of the hunt as you ventured forth to confront Lotho's ruffians?'

Ferdi halted and stared at Haldoron. 'The thrill o' the hunt?' he echoed, stunned, and then he shook his head. 'Satisfaction, certainly, after the conclusion of a successful hunt. Fear, to be honest, when facing such formidable foes as wild swine or rogue Men twice as tall as myself.'

Seeing the distance increasing between himself and the younger hobbits ahead of them, he resumed walking, but he kept talking in a lower tone, drawing Haldoron along with him. 'I think we've stumbled o'er another difference between our sort and yours... For Men, so far as I've been able to work it out, use the term thrill to describe a sort of pleasurable excitement, whereas Shire-folk understand the meaning as that unpleasant sensation of someone walking o'er your grave, so to speak.' He glanced at Haldoron and looked away. 'I mean, that prickle on the back of the neck, suggesting that all is not well and will soon worsen, even...' 

He snorted lightly. 'Thus, while you may hear Hobbits speak of the thrill of adventure, for us, it's more dread than delightful anticipation...'

Haldoron's response was low and thoughtful. 'Yet Bilbo continued his wandering after he returned from that first adven—journey,' he amended.

'He wasn't called "mad Baggins" for no reason,' Ferdi argued. 'His experience had untethered him...' 

'Set him free?' the Man said quizzically.

Ferdi's mouth twisted in frustration. 'Beasts are tethered for our good as well as their own,' he emphasised. 'To keep a pony out of the green apples; to keep a goat from eating the laundry drying on the line; to keep a dog from wandering and being shot as a sheep-worrier...' 

After further thought, the Hobbit continued. 'The Brandybucks have a term: unmoored.' He shuddered. 'While talking of boats is completely unnatural, at least for such sensible folk as the Tooks, unmoored is how I might describe the old Baggins after he "returned from the dead"—as many said at the time, or so I heard.'

'Unmoored...' the Man mused.

'Much as it pains me to explain, from what my cousin Merry has told me, an empty boat must be tied up to keep it from wandering.'

Haldoron smiled suddenly and glanced at Ferdi out of the corner of his eye. 'Not as unnatural as all that, actually. Much like a pony without a rider on its back, I should think?' 

'Be that as it may,' Ferdi said severely, as if affronted by the comparison of sensible ponies with foolish boats, 'old Bilbo was unmoored... quite possibly due to the influence of the cursed treasure he brought back to the Shire with him. He was never quite able to settle again after that, not even after It passed on to my cousin Frodo... whose life was also forever altered as a consequence.'

But then the anger left his face, to be replaced by sorrow, and he sighed. 'And the both of them sailed with the Elves, their lives so blighted by their...' his face twisted with distress as he pronounced the next word, '...adventures... that neither was able to abide in the Shire, much less able to remain "very happy to the end of his days", as Mayor Sam once said to me when speaking of Bilbo's memoirs and how the old hobbit chose to end them.' More quietly, he said, 'So I beg of you, my friend, do not speak to me of adventures. For you might as well speak of torment or death or exile or other such unpleasant things.'

The two continued walking in silence from that point, the Man deep in thought as to all he'd learned about Hobbits in this past hour alone, and the Hobbit seemingly lost in his own thoughts.

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Note: Some descriptive phrases in this chapter were drawn from "Flight to the Ford" in The Fellowship of the Ring by J.R.R. Tolkien.

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